About Us
Guest Book
-
Jerry Johnson, USA, June 2016
“Filipa – sorry for the delay in responding. Needed a little break after 3 great weeks in Portugal and Spain.
It was a great trip with wonderful arrangement made by you and PortugalTrails. Everything went smoothly and we had a great new experiences during our 3 week adventure (even the pick pocket was a new experience…and didn’t negatively influence our wonderful time). Beautiful scenery, very friendly people, great food and wine!“Here are a few of our comments regarding the overall itinerary (for your info):
• Private city walking tours were great. Enjoyed all 3 tour guides…added a lot to our understanding of Lisbon, Porto, and Santiago
• Hotels were great
• Directions (written and GPS) worked great
• Day 4: Would have liked to have more time in Sintra…lots to see with limited time…but got the highlights
• Day 5: We did not go to Nazare…added Batalha instead
• Day 6: We were not too impressed with the Moliceiro boat trip in Aveiro. Took some time to walk to/from the hotel to the remote dock location, there were some delays waiting for others also booked to arrive (ended up being a group of small school children…operator finally decided to launch with just the 2 of us when the kids were still not ready to go after arriving 15 minutes late). Wine and pasty tasting was just a small bottle of wine and a couple of pastries in cellophane. Believe we could have easily booked with one of the operators right outside our hotel and had a similar or better overall experience.
• Day 14: Was nice to have a slow day, but really not all that much to do/see in Belmonte area
• Day 17: FYI – we were not able to finalize last-minute arrangements for a cork factory tour…due to cork harvest and other arranged special group tours, their only available tour was at 10am and with a 3+ hour drive from Evora we were not able to get there in time. They did offer us a special restricted tour at 6pm but would have meant not getting to Lagos until after 8pm, so we decided no. We did stop at a museum and saw a video on cork harvesting along with some hands-on displays.
• For us, we could have shortened the Lagos stay to 2 nights instead of 3…but was nice to have a slower pace at the end of the 3 weeks
• Day 20: As an added bonus, we were able to see the Portugal National Team celebration in Lisbon after their Euro Cup Victory…fun to see the excitement of the large crowds of fans, see the players and the trophy (watched with my hand on my wallet at all times )As with all trips, we would probably do a few things differently based on what we know now…but we still give the trip and your planning/arrangements an A+! We will certainly recommend PortugalTrails to anyone looking for Portugal travel planning and would be happy to be a reference if you have potential customers looking for feedback. (Note…we ran into a few other travelers that had also worked through PortugalTrails (the orange travel binder was a definite give away)…and all seemed to be very happy with the planning/arrangements!)
Thanks for your help!”
-
Tom Edmonds, USA, June 2016
“Dear Vanessa,
We had a great time on the trip. Can’t believe that we checked into 8 hotels, rented two cars with a transfer in between, went on at least 7 excursions and there were zero hiccups! Your organizational skills were amazing. I hope you don’t mind but I have copied Julie Beck on this email. She is traveling to Spain and Portugal and we would like to make her our first referral to you. There will be many more. Julie is a world class traveler and knows everyone so the word will spread fast about you if she is as happy with your services as we were.
I’ll try to summarize the high and low points below (there weren’t many lows)1. Regions
Favorite cities – Porto and Seville
Favorite small towns – Pinhao (probably the highlight of the trip for us) and White hill towns (particularly Grazelema, Ronda, and Zahara) Evora would be next followed by Valencia and Malaga. Lisbon was okay but didn’t have any sites better than Porto or Seville and was more difficult to get around. The only towns we didn’t like were Jerez and Arcos de Frontera.2. Dining
Best two spots were DOC in Douro and Carmen Mirador de Aixa in Granada (both with amazing food and beautiful), followed closely by a meal we had on the waterfront in the Triana area of Seville called Abades Triana. .
Best inexpensive dive would have to be Ora Viva in Porto ,1/4 Para as 9 in Evora or El Aji in Seville. We ate at lots of quality Tapas Bars in Valencia, Seville, Ronda (Tragatapas), Porto, and Lisbon. The only tapas restaurant I would not recommend would be Bodegas Castaneda in Granada. Service was horrible. We actually left after drinks and before dinner was ordered because they were so rude.
The meal at the Fada dinner at Mesa de Frades was authentic and a pleasant surprise.3. Hotels
A real highlight of the trip. All hotels were outstanding in their own way.
Best Splurge was definitely the Yeatman. Stunning hotel and worth the price. Only downside was long walk to town but it felt good to stretch our legs after the big dinners.
Slightly behind the Yeatman but still amazing was the Vintage House in Pinhao.
3rd through 5th place would go to the three posadas/paradors (Rhonda, Evora, and Lisbon, probably in that order).
Rounding out the stellar list would be the Hotel Becquer in Seville, the Suites Gran Via in Granada, and the Vincci Lys in Valencia (in that order). All were centrally located and roomy.4. Activities
A. Planned activities – Our favorites would have to be the guided tour of Porto with Ricardo, who was outstanding, and the Alhambra tour (although the guide wasn’t great). A nice surprise was the wine tasting in Evora. The surroundings were not great but our guide was excellent. Patricia was a good guide in Lisbon but the city wasn’t as interesting as Porto. The Fado dinner was great. The singing was professional but we tired of it after a few hours and it was getting very late. The Flamenco night was a little bit of a disappointment. The singers were just so so and talked amongst themselves instead of interacting with the audience. We got the impression that they were very arrogant. We wished we had gone to a more authentic show in the Sacromonte district of Granada. The Douro cruise was relaxing but the views were better from the roads.B. Unplanned activities – I’ll rate these by stars since we did so many.
5 stars – Hike down into Gorge in Ronda near Puente Nuevo. Electric Bike tour of Albaicin and Sacromonte in Granada. Bike Ride to Arts and Science Center in Valencia (spent half day in Oceanographic Sea Park, very nice). Personal walking tour of Seville (good during day but even better at night) including downtown, Plaza de Espana, and Barrio Santa Cruz. Visiting Livraria Lello bookstore in Porto.
4 stars – Picasso Museum in Malaga. Hike near Grazelema. Porto wine tasting in small Quinta Marrocos near Peso de Regua in Douro area. Visiting Bull fighting ring and museum in Ronda.
3 stars – Climbing towers in Valencia, Porto, and Lisbon. Walking tour of Evora. Wine tasting in Porto. Bike ride in Seville.C. Activities we didn’t get to but kind of wish we did Vuelve Carolina Restaurant in Valencia – looked nice but fully booked.
Visit Murcia, Belmonte, Almarante, Guimaraes, Obidos, and Sintra which were all nearby.
Arabic baths in Granada
Watch flamenco in Sacromonte instead of Seville.
Take a tour of Alcazar and Cathedral in Seville (we passed because of recent visits to Alhambra and other cathedrals) Watch a bullfight – timing just did not work out.
Eat at Ode Porto Wine House and Majestic Cafe in Porto- just not enough time.
Visit Monastery and tower in Belem area of Lisbon.” -
Warren & Johanne , Canada, May 2016
“So Filipa, here we are again back in Montreal. Vacations go too quickly.
The trip was great. We really enjoyed the east coast of Spain and all of the hotels were perfect in terms of quality and location. Walking tour was great, GPS well programmed and hotel/airport pick-ups on time. Finally the itinerary worked well. Perhaps Zaragoza could have been dropped as there is not too much to do, but it was interesting as it was a bit of an insight into the non-touristic part of Spain. Barcelona and Valencia were wonderful. Hotels in just the right spot made touring through the city easy. In Barcelona we were five minutes from the Gothic Centre and five minutes from the beach if we wanted to relax. Tarragona was very interesting. The Hotel, Mas La Bella, was out of the town, but so beautiful we took the opportunity to eat there (wonderful meals if a bit pricy). Finally Gerona was the perfect ending. We were ten minutes from the town centre, which is the most beautiful medieval city I have ever seen (mind you the hotel is on a mountain overlooking the town and while it was ten minutes down to the town, it was a taxi back to the hotel). The surrounding area was an adventure. As you recall I had a concern with driving through mountains. Well we went to Cadaques and Tossa de Mar. Not for the faint of heart! Having conquered the drive to Cadaques, I regretted not keeping your first itinerary.
Net net Filipa, we had a great trip. Thank you. We will happily send comment to your web site if you wish.
Warren & Johanne”
-
Sylvie & François, Canada, May 2016
“Hello Cristina,
Sorry I didn’t get back to you sooner. Everything is fine, but it would be even better if we were still in Portugal!
We had a wonderful trip! You have a very beautiful country with great people! Your services exceeded our expectations. Thank you so very much. We are used to organizing our own trips, so this formula was new to us. We did a total of 1400 km with the car and 177 km on foot! We added other destinations to our itinerary and got to visit more of your wonderful country. The Pousadas and the Hotels that you selected for us were totally amazing. Honestly, we could not ask for anything more. We got a little Fiat 500 convertible and it was the perfect car for entering the Medieval villages.
We ate too much, the Portugese food is so delicious and we drank Port every night. We greatly appreciated our welcome gift at the airport, Port, cookies and soap, what a nice surprise!
I would like to thank you, Cristina, for arranging such a beautiful trip for us. I will certainly tell the world on Tripadvisor about Portugal Trails! I have close to 500 reviews so far (that is without our Iceland and Portugal trip) on Tripadvisor.
Concerning Spain, would I find this information on Portugal Trails also?
Sincerely,
Sylvie & François”
-
Ute Lippold, Canada, May 2016
“Hi Diana,
I have been wanting to send you an email for quite a while now and am finally getting around to it. I hope your busy season is going well!
I wanted to let you know how much we enjoyed our trip to Portugal and how happy we were with all the arrangements you made for us. We have been talking to family and friends and recommended that if Portugal was on their bucket list to contact you for sure.
Rod and I would like to return at some time in the not too distant future to travel to the southern parts of the country. When the time comes we will be in touch.
Take care and “obrigada”!
Ute.” -
Carolyn Streader, Australia, May 2016
“Dear Ana,
We loved our holiday in Portugal, thanks to you for making it so easy.
The choice of accommodation was excellent and a great way to showcase what can be done with historic buildings.
We got off to a slow start as there was a problem with the rental car. The GPS could not be activated via the cigarette lighter so we had to wait for another car, even though they had dropped it off the day before. Obviously no one had checked it! so we drove, with the representative of that company to her office & picked up a new (old) car. The cover for the cases did not work on this car but they fixed that eventually. We were delayed by a couple of hours and this meant that the first day was rather rushed and it took us several days to catch up on all there was to see and do. A minor problem really but they should be more professional. Not your fault!!!
All the guides were excellent with their knowledge and personable people. I recommended Marta to some other friends of ours who happened to be in Lisbon at the same time.
We had some memorable meals and enjoyed 3 Fado nights, 2 in Lisbon and the other in Porto at Vinhas D’alho. The food at this restaurant was excellent as was the Fado music. Husband & wife proprietors sing Fado.
We probably didn’t need to have the degustation lunch at the winery but we did enjoy Evora and Elvas.
So thank you Ana for your excellent organisation and I will add my comments to Tripadvisor.Sincerely,
Carolyn Streader”